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- Hacker News
- > You will encounter business decisions you think are terrible but you still have to sell to your team.
This is incorrect. You don't have to. In fact, you shouldn't.
There can be situation in which stuff will need to happen regardless, yes, but that does not require lying and probably works even better when one does not lie.
The post then continues with more such falsehoods and incorrect learnings one could deconstruct, but the spirit of all of them is mostly the same, making that mostly redundant.
Managing is hard and it's easy to fall into these tropes. But they are just that. Easy tropes. They are not the way.
by hypfer - >> You will encounter business decisions you think are terrible but you still have to sell to your team.
> This is incorrect. You don't have to. In fact, you shouldn't.
> There can be situation in which stuff will need to happen regardless, yes, but that does not require lying and probably works even better when one does not lie.
Selling doesn't mean lying. It's usually possible to sell, or persuade, the team to move forward on terrible decisions, without resorting to lying, if you're a good manager.
Having said that, steering a team to execute on good or bad business decisions often do involve withholding information, and some argues -- though I disagree -- that's also lying. If you subscribe to that reasoning, then I suppose you would be right.
- Agree - If you think your team is below your intellectual level, then by all means lie and sell them on terrible decisions you don't believe in.
An honest manager who respects the intellect of their reports has more nuance in delivering requirements that must be met, without clowning themselves as a propaganda mouthpiece.
by steveBK123 - I agree with this, but the social dynamic just sucks. I would much rather the manager be part of the team, not feel lonely, be able to joke around about safe things (so, not politics, religion, or identity), and even complain a bit.
>You will not get the training you need
This is just plain unacceptable. It is likely due to companies thinking everyone is replaceable and not investing in their employees though. I don't know how companies can simultaneously want managers to practice the sanitized humanity detailed here while also not providing training to do what they want.
by sivalus - This is a lot of asshole puckering over nothing. Is this post really about doing your job, or about protecting your ego? Posturing and a defensive attitude will never be respected by anyone. People just want to trust you to deliver results. They don't care about the rest of you.
There are so many meaningless phrases and words used like "part of the team" and "dumb", "lazy", "tough". There are no examples given of these things. An uncritical reader might let their imagination run wild catastrophizing. Nobody in a leadership role should even have a mind for such quick and empty characterizations. Most of the job is continuous assessment after all.
All that really matters is that you understand the business and the work of the people you're managing. Be flexible with your time and assume good faith in discussions. You're not going to know what you're lacking until you're already in the role.
Mike Tyson quote: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth"
by sublinear - One of the more counter-intuitive parts of management that I've found is that your focus shifts from delivering a technical outcome to care-taking a team that delivers technical outcomes. It's a meta-function.
A related physics metaphor - in general as you move from IC to SR to management, your focus shifts from changing the position to changing the velocity and acceleration of those around you.
by joshmarlow - There's a note at the end:
> As always, this blog post is written by me, without any AI, so all errors are my own.
However, the illustrations in the post are clearly made by generative AI, are they not?
by rav - Yes, but I don’t read blog posts for the art. As placeholders they’re not terrible.by skybrian
- Why does AI want to stress me with that cup about to fall off the deskby red_hare
- The author claims the POST is WRITTEN by them. They did not claim the ILLUSTRATIONS were DRAWN by them. Most of us are not artists. Sometimes its hard to find the right illustrations.
But what did you think of the article itself?
by jms703 - Similar when you climb up the technical path as well, beyond staff engineer. It gets lonely, not many peers, not part of a team, you have to be careful about what you say and to whom as your words carry a lot of significance.by bironran
- At staff you are still spending a lot of your time working with people. You are working on technical problems but you should be teaching them how to do it.
If you want to be heads down working on code all day stick to senior engineer.
by bluGill - All leadership is like that. Even if you're not a people manager.
I'm an IC in a technical leadership position, all of these hold true with the added constraint that I cannot tell anyone what to do. I hold no carrot or stick.
I have to persuade, convince and influence, I have no reports (nor I want them) so to get anything done I need to get people to align and understand the value on its merits.
by juancn - If people follow your direction, it is usually because the argument made sense, the trust was already there or you did the unglamorous work of aligning everyone beforehandby MarceliusK
- The good news is those skills of getting people to believe in you and your thing are critical to leadership as an EM too.
I’m sure we all can think of managers who don’t have those skills but rely on the stick, and those managers are lousy at their job.
Good leadership skills have a lot of overlap between IC and EM.
by Esophagus4 - Missed the part about 100x the stress and politics for 1.2x the pay.
- That's pretty much the first bullet pointby GlickWick
- The reality is that there is no escaping management. A high level IC is pretty much just an unofficial manager. You are responsible for a large technical area - it's your job to meet with stakeholders, design the roadmap, build durable team processes to maintain velocity, mentor and identify the right work for the right people. You may not have back to back meetings but between 1:1s, stakeholders, projects, and ad-hoc fires they're likely still a majority your schedule. You are expected to lead without authority. Leadership will change priorities and reorganize the teams every six months. If you're focused and deliberate, you can maybe get can your project landed before the next reorg.by siliconc0w
- I went back to a senior IC role after managing for 5 years and I think there are big differences. Yeah, some aspects have to do with leadership (regardless of whether or not you manage) and there's overlap, but... there are also huge differences. I wrote about one I experienced: https://alejo.ch/3g9by afc
- This is very accurate. For me personally, I found the difficulties, friction, and stress, have started to eclipse the pros and decided to move back into an IC role after 15 years as EM/SrEM.
The work life balance was also terrible. You really do ruminate and worry about a lot, much of it outside of your control.
by jms703 - > You really do ruminate and worry about a lot, much of it outside of your control.
I believe that comes down to temperament, though being on either extreme end of that spectrum leads to problems.
by argee - I think this might scare some people off from management unnecessarily.
A lot of what's being described here is important for new managers to understand, but eventually, once you find your footing, you can start to determine where the rules can bend.
For instance, a lot of new managers struggle because they want to keep a foot in the IC world. I think most new managers would benefit from stepping away from the code for an extended period of time. But many experienced managers do eventually return back to writing code while still serving in a management role, although certainly not at the level they did before.
Likewise, it's really important for new managers to understand that friendship dynamics will change. But that doesn't mean that you can't foster very warm relationships with people who report to you. Just like a teacher-student relationship, you can have great fondness for each other while recognizing that there are some lines that absolutely can't be crossed.
by jawns - It confirmed that management would be a bad choice for me. If anything I think that the article is going to give people the ability to say "no" if they are on the fence. I don't want to sell. I don't want to politic. I don't want to know about re-orgs before the employees whom it actually affects. I don't want to lay off someone because my team's profits are being siphoned by others. I don't want to carry upper management's BS and tell it to my coworkers with a straight face. And if you do, I hope it keeps you up a little bit at night.by smcg
- If it scares you off, thats a good thing. A manager who doesn't want to do these things might not be an effective manager. I think its better to go in eyes open to what it really means. I think the author did a good job of that.
I was hoping for more upsides, but, I'm not surprised by the short list either.
by jms703 - Mostly agree with this article. When I mentor people about managing, some other bits I also usually mention:
1. 'You’re not “part of the team” anymore.' - You're not part of the software dev team, but if you're doing things right, you're part of a team, just a new one. I encourage manager mentees of mine to read a book "Five Dysfunctions of a Team" which talks about figuring out who your "first team" is. Even in environments where you manage an autonomous team, you likely are working alongside other teams towards some bigger goal. Some of the things that worked being part of a software development team continue to work in the new setting, but you also need a new set of tools.
2. It's a two-way door. I've bounced back and forth between IC and manager roles. Some of it is just how the job market is (you look for a job, there aren't manager jobs, you go back to being an IC). Sometimes, people do it intentionally because they like being an IC. It's ok to try out being a manager, and realizing you don't like it.
A lot of what's here isn't specific to managing, and if you advance in your career as an IC, you'll experience similar.
by jkingsbery - Back in Soviet times there was a trend in Sci-Fi depicting the bright communist future when people changed professions every few years or so, often between manual and intellectual, to stay sharp.by sam_lowry_
- In a way management should be treated more like a role change than a one-way promotionby MarceliusK